


we change with time (but not too much)

by DaughterofDreams



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Fluffy Ending, Gen, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Light Angst, Multi, Past Child Abuse, and theyre working through them, apologies to anyone who actually does, but not the sburb kind, i did not flesh out their relationship aside from the general fluffiness, i know nothing about virginia woolf or her works, i will admit i know nothing about alcoholism and this may not be realistic, implied polyamory, mostly fluffy, the polyamory tag is a little nebulous, they have issues, they share an apartment and a bed, those tags are for dave, yes - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-21
Updated: 2020-01-21
Packaged: 2021-02-27 11:06:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,110
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22342282
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DaughterofDreams/pseuds/DaughterofDreams
Summary: The beta kids go to college and share an apartment (and a bed). They still have issues, just not the world-ending game kind.
Relationships: John Egbert/Jade Harley/Rose Lalonde/Dave Strider
Kudos: 39





	we change with time (but not too much)

**Author's Note:**

> Triggers: past alcohol abuse, references to extreme loneliness, brief reference to past child abuse, one of them has a panic attack but it's brief and handled well.  
> I will admit I know next to nothing about alcoholism, but I wrote this mostly for myself and wasn't concerned with realism.

Dave has no fucking clue what he’s doing with his life. He’s lounging (ironically, obviously, not because he’s dead tired) in the blinding sun on a rickety wooden bench outside the even more decrepit anthropology building on campus. His excessively stupid subway visor-hat is hanging from one hand as he rests his arms on the back, glancing up at the excessively cheerful cloudless blue sky through his ancient aviators. It almost reminds him of John, like the blinding shade of blue is just grinning at him down here amid melting piles of slush.

He checks his watch again impatiently, even though he already knows the time. Rose should be coming out of the Liberal Arts building in less than a minute, although he knows that with his luck she’ll have stopped to gossip with the professor about Nietzsche or Jung or whatever decrepit philosopher they’re discussing this week. At least he’ll get a few more minutes on the bench before he has to get up again. 

Back to his inner monologue; surely he’ll come up with more creative euphemisms for how fucked he is, unless his endless well of saucy humor is as drained as he is.

He only closes his eyes for a minute, but when he opens them again, Rose’s unnaturally pale face is less than a foot from his and a smirk is sitting squarely on her black lips. 

He squawks, flailing and almost falling off the bench before he rights himself and glowers at her. 

“A little late for a nap, don’t you think; brother mine?” she adds, almost as an afterthought. 

He sticks his tongue out at her, reluctantly leaving the hard, wooden embrace of the bench in favor of subjecting his poor feet to unforgiving concrete once again. 

“What held you up this time? Was all the talk about Freud getting you hot and bothered again?”

She swats him in the arm and he almost jumps away from her. She lowers her hand with an apologetic glance and replies without pause, carefully avoiding the moment that made the crawling under his skin return with a vengeance. “There’s no need to be crass, Dave. And don’t talk to me about that miserable man.” She pauses for a moment, a wicked smile curving her black lips, then adds, “Now, if we had been discussing Virginia Woolf’s works, then you may have had some weight to your point…”

He groans loudly, tipping his head back and looking over at her. “Don’t bring me into your imaginary sex life, Rose.” 

Rose raises an eyebrow. “Dirty comments aside, aren’t we supposed to be meeting John and Jade right about now?”

Dave swears under his breath, realizing why his internal clock has felt so off. “Race you?”

They take off running, a mad dash of flailing pale limbs and pointed elbows and dodging around affronted passersby, but they certainly don’t care.

Jade is humming a rock song under her breath as she carefully prunes dead limbs off one of the miniatures they keep in the greenhouse. One last snip, then she lets the pruning shears hang at her side from one rubber-gloved hand, pulling the other glove off with her teeth and wiping sweat off her forehead. 

No matter if it’s cold enough to maintain freezing slush over the sidewalks, the greenhouse always stays at a constant (and boiling) ninety degrees. _I really should start keeping cooler clothes with me_ , she thinks, rummaging in a pocket of her dirt-covered overalls for the little plastic bag of reminders, slipping a lovely neon green rubber band over her pinky finger so she doesn’t forget. 

The sound of someone banging against one of the glass panels catches her attention, and she turns to scowl at whoever dares to bang on her greenhouse, taking the glove out of her mouth (it isn’t really hers, it’s the university’s, but it will always be hers in spirit dammit). 

A wide grin and a pair of square glasses are pressing themselves against the glass; John Egbert himself is smooshing his face against it, crossing his eyes at her and fogging up the pane.

She puts her hands on her hips, giving him a stern look straight from her grandfather’s playbook before she loses it and bursts into giggles. Setting the pruning shears on a nearby bench and stripping her other glove off, she grabs her backpack from the floor and pushes open the door, emerging into the refreshingly cool January air. 

“John Egbert! I thought I told you not to bang on the greenhouse!” She exclaims as he peels himself away from the glass, still grinning at her.

“Yeah, but it got your attention! Come on, we’re supposed to meet Dave and Rose!” He bounces off and she follows, slinging her backpack over one shoulder and jogging a little to catch up with him. 

Rose is already calmly sipping from a to-go cup of straight black coffee when they cross the lawn between the greenhouse and the giant glass building that houses most of the general classes on campus. Dave is slumped over the table, head cradled in his arms and aviators hanging loosely from a raised hand above his head. 

Jade throws herself into the metal chair, letting her backpack fall off her shoulder to the ground. John is already sprawling in the chair to her right. 

“What’s with Dave?” John asks Rose as she smoothly wipes a lipstick stain off of the cup’s lid. 

“Darling David is exhausted because he’s been pulling double shifts at Subway again, like I specifically told him not to,” she replies, just as Dave raises his head and squints irritatedly at her. 

“Dave!” John scolds, already digging into his backpack. He pulls out a pack of gummy worms, pushing them across the table at Dave and giving him a scowl-pout until Dave caves and opens them. 

“We’re just fine on money, Dave, there’s no need for you to be pulling double shifts. Go volunteer! Figure out what you want to do!” Jade chimes in. 

“I told you, I don’t know what I want to do. There’s not exactly a major for ‘DJ’,” he says, tearing a gummy worm in half and tossing one of the pieces in his mouth. “And I already know what you’re going to say next, so drop it. We’ve had this conversation about a dozen times.”

The other three drop it, even as they silently resolve to keep hounding him about it later. Instead, Jade asks Rose how her classes went and John jots down a grocery list for dinner tonight in between Dave’s idle comments about what John should do for his latest programming project. 

Before long, John’s watch beeps, signaling that he needs to start walking to make it to his late class. He passes the grocery list off to Rose with strict instructions not to let Jade or Dave try and add inventive “twists” to the recipe. Jade laughs raucously at a joke Dave just cracked, draping herself over him as they split up, John heading for the shuttle stop to take him to the computer science building downtown, Jade, Dave, and Rose heading towards Dave’s ancient Camry in the performance center parking lot. 

Their shared apartment is a ridiculous clutter of half-finished knitting projects, jars of dead things in preserving liquid, and a truly excessive number of plants. There’s a sagging armchair in one corner that they’d picked out at Goodwill the summer they moved in (most of the stuffing is gone, but Jade finds that Rose won’t miss a few of her endless scarves and snuck a few inside the cushion when she wasn’t looking to replace it), and a hideous flower-print couch against the large window that was the main reason they’d picked this apartment.

The kitchenette is no-less poorly appointed, with a wheezing fridge, microwave, and stained oven making up the majority of the appliances, but even a private detective couldn’t find a trace of baked goods or the reviled red spoon logo of Betty Crocker inside it. John is very protective of his kitchen, mostly so that they actually have something edible every night.

Secretly, they’re all grateful that he guards the kitchen so fiercely, because without him they would likely eat takeout, apple juice, and/or pop-tarts for every meal. This does not keep them from trying to “improve”, “add a twist to”, or otherwise screw with his meal ideas, however.

Jade tosses the plastic bag of groceries onto the linoleum counter before tossing herself into the armchair, sprawling over it like one of her beloved squiddles. Rose shakes her head, placing her bag on the counter much more primly, her boots clicking against the linoleum floor of the kitchen (clicking is somewhat of a misnomer here. It’s more of a ‘stick, click, stick’ somewhat akin to when someone spills soda on the floor. However, in this case, it is not soda, but rather apple juice that paves their kitchen. Ironically enough, it was John’s fault, not Dave’s). 

“What wond’rous creation hath John for us tonight?” asks Dave melodramatically, leaning against one of the cabinets with a hand on his forehead a la southern damsel. 

“Pasta,” Rose replies, deadpan.

Dave leans closer to her. “And?”

She gives him an unamused look. “Garlic bread.”

Before Dave can launch into an overdramatic monologue, a whoop of excitement comes from the armchair and Jade launches herself across the room and into the kitchen, wild hair flying. “Did you say garlic bread?”

“You two and your love of vampire-repelling baked goods.” Rose shakes her head even as a smile tugs at her black-painted lips, turning away to grab one of the clean pots off the stove and fill it with water. While they do have a functioning sink (no thanks to _Dave_ , who likes to pour failed attempts at preserving dead things down it), they lack both a dishwasher and cabinet space. Therefore, all of their pots indefinitely remain on the stovetop after being washed. 

“Who’s on dish duty tonight?” Jade asks, leaning on Dave’s shoulder. 

She can feel Dave physically wilt against her and she looks down at him. “I’m guessing you,” she says, not unkindly. “Oh well, I’ll do it. But the next time you pull double shifts, I’m not letting you out of it mister!” she exclaims. 

Dave’s gratitude is almost palpable, even if his face remains stoic as always behind his shades. They’re still working with him on emotions, but it’s an uphill battle after seventeen years of Bro’s “cool” mantra.

Rose is going through the grocery bags, setting bags of pasta and a bottle of oil and other little things on the counter when she freezes, breath audibly leaving her lungs. Jade can see her fingers curl from here, her hands shaking even as the rest of her doesn’t move.

Immediately, Dave is next to Rose, pulling her away from the counter where Jade can see the top of a little bottle of cooking sherry poking out of the plastic. 

“Rose, look at me,” says Dave, holding her shoulder. She won’t make eye contact, even as one of her hands slips through the cage of Dave’s arms to rise to her lips. 

Jade quickly grabs the bottle, snatching her keys from the counter as well and leaving the apartment to dispose of it.

Rose still isn’t breathing, fingers shaking against her lips and smearing black over the tips. 

“Rose. What color am I wearing,” asks Dave urgently.

“Re-red,” she forces out, feeling like her lungs are imploding. 

“How many red things are in this room?” 

She frantically casts her eyes about, her hands clinging to Dave’s arms.

Two skeins of yarn in her knitting basket, Dave’s shirt, the orchid on the windowsill…

“F-four.”

“Good. Come on, let’s go over here. I’ll cook dinner, and I’ll even throw in those little shrimp that you like, ok?”

She’s breathing again, if shallowly, as he leads her over to the armchair and sits on the arm next to her.

“How many plants do we own?”

A faint smile as she carefully breathes in through her nose. “Too many.”

“Good answer, but I need a number. Can you do that?”

She nods, hands nestled in her lap as she silently counts them. The burning thirst is almost gone now, but she can still taste the phantom flavor of sherry on her tongue. It was never her favorite- now, tequila, that was the stuff-

“Rose. Focus. How many plants do we have?” interrupts Dave, and she both hates him and could sink to her knees and thank him for it. 

She finishes her count, looking back down at her hands. “Fifteen individual plants. Not counting the plants in the greenhouse that we all agree are Jade’s.”

Dave’s sigh of relief is soft, but still audible. “Ok. You good for me to work on dinner?”

She nods, carefully raising her gaze to look around the room. Jade still hasn’t returned (the dumpster is behind their building, four flights of stairs down), and her eyes quickly flick over the spot where she can still see the phantom image of that bottle. 

He rises from the arm of the chair, heading back into the little kitchen. The pot is already boiling, and he stares at the recipe for a minute before shaking dry pasta into the water. 

“A little more, Dave,” she says from the chair. “We want leftovers.”

He nods, carefully shaking a little more in before looking at her for her approval. She nods sagely.

The little frying pan is sitting on one of the unlit burners, so Dave just turns it on and chucks a pat of butter in. Usually the shrimp are only for special occasions, but tasting something she likes that isn’t alcohol has helped in the past. 

The rattling of keys in the door signifies Jade’s return, and she steps empty-handed into the apartment. Rose focuses on the blue of her overalls and her green Nikes, unable to make eye contact.

“We making shrimp too? Yum,” says Jade lightly. 

“What did you do with it?” asks Rose before she can stop herself. 

Jade and Dave exchange glances before Jade replies. “Poured it down a sink and threw out the bottle, just like you told us to.”

Rose just nods, and Jade closes the door, relocking it before she moves to the kitchen to unpack the rest of the groceries.

Jade had thrown the sherry in the cart without thinking, hoping to cook something nice for John before exam week. It had only been four months since they’d all moved in together and it came out that Rose was an eighteen-year-old recovering alcoholic. Her mother had left her alone for long stretches of time on business trips and handed her education over to an online program, and Rose had turned to the well-stocked cabinet of alcohol to cope. 

This was the second time Jade had ever seen how Rose reacted in the presence of alcohol, the first time being in a restaurant and well controlled, and she had figured that very specific “cooking alcohol” would be acceptable. _Never again_ , Jade silently swore. 

Dave glances at her from where he’s stirring the pasta, a silent question. She bites her lip, mouthing “later” at him. 

He mimes texting, silently asking if she’s texted John about it yet. 

She reaches for her phone in her back pocket, wiggling it at him briefly before she pulls up her chat with John and starts typing. 

_gardenGnostic: I brought cooking sherry home and Rose had a panic attack.  
gardenGnostic: she’s fine now, don’t rush home. finish class. we’ve got it under control _

“Hey Rose? You want to help me water the plants?”

The pasta & shrimp are done, lids over them to keep warm, when they hear the sound of keys scrabbling in the door and John bursts in. He looks like he ran all the way from the parking lot, his laptop bag slung at an awkward angle over his shoulder. 

Rose and Dave are helping Jade to water the myriad plants covering the apartment and they all look over at him. 

“Rose!” John exclaims, wheezing slightly as he pulls his keys out of the door and closes it. He dumps his bag on the floor, crossing the floor and hugging her. 

She freezes for a moment before sinking into him, hugging him with one arm as she holds the little purple watering can out to Dave. 

Dave takes it, putting hers and his down on the floor before he and Jade join the hug, smooshing Rose in a tangle of limbs.

She’s practically boneless in the middle of their group hug, clinging to John like her life depends on it. They silently agree not to let go until she does, and they end up standing there like that for a good five minutes before she finally lets go of John.

“Let’s eat,” John says, taking Rose’s hand and pulling her into the kitchen. He brings their mismatched plates down from the cupboard, putting the stack on the counter and lifting the lids on the food. 

They’re halfway through dinner when Jade bursts out, “Rose, I’m so sorry I brought it into the apartment. I wanted to cook something nice for John for exam week, and I wasn’t thinking.” 

Rose looks up from her pasta. “I don’t blame you, Jade,” she says quietly, violet gaze unblinking. 

“Still. I shouldn’t have brought it to the apartment.”

“Thank you,” Rose says.

And that was the end of that.

They settle onto the couch after dishes are done and the leftovers saved, setting John’s laptop up on the coffee table to watch _The Witcher_. Ice cream is obviously necessary. Bedtime isn’t long after, all of them crowding into the one bathroom to brush their teeth at the same time. There is a lot of giggling and elbowing involved, and finally they head to bed. 

Rose is the first under the covers, liking to be in the middle of the cuddle pile they inevitably end up in. Jade brackets her on one side and John and Dave are on the other, cozying close in their giant bed. It took forever to find a mattress that would fit all of them comfortably and still fit in the apartment, but they did it. 

Rose turns onto her back, staring up at the ceiling. “Thank you,” she whispers.

“For what?” Jade asks, turning her head and squinting at her. 

“For caring so much.”

Jade slings one arm over her, pulling her close as Dave pushes John closer to do the same thing. 

It doesn’t take them long to fall asleep that night.


End file.
